


should I choose a noble occupation

by patientalien



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Gen, POV Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 10:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18871510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patientalien/pseuds/patientalien
Summary: The Last Valkyrie knows exactly what Thor is going through. She's been through it herself, for much longer, but now that she's recovering and has a kingdom to reluctantly look after, she finds that Thor's downfall could very well also be her own.





	should I choose a noble occupation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [citizenjess (givehimonemore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/givehimonemore/gifts), [LadySilvertongue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilvertongue/gifts).



> The best explanation I have as to why Val didn't step in sooner. She knows the score. Also I know her name is Brunnhilde, but I call her Valkyrie because that's what they call her in the movie and because I like how it sounds. 
> 
> Title from "My Alcoholic Friends" by The Dresden Dolls

In the end, none of the planning they had done on the Statesman before the attack matters at all. By the time the Commodore arrives on Midgard, half the population of the universe has turned to dust. No one cares if a small handful of refugees takes over an empty cliffside in Norway. The Last Valkyrie - now one of the last Asgardians - considers that small consolation. Most of their numbers gone when Asgard went down in flames, another half massacred by Thanos and his Black Order. And then, on the Commodore, shoved there by Thor and Loki and Heimdall, yet more, flaking away into nothing. Valkyrie arrives on Midgard with perhaps fifty of the original thousand or so they had left Asgard with. It feels like triumph. It feels like failure.

She's looking out over the water, their second day on Earth, almost a month since everything changed, trying to decide how to proceed. She figures the King and the Prince must be dead; how could they be anything but? The weight of responsibility weighs heavy on her shoulders, but she bears it as well as she can. There is work to be done. 

When the Bifrost opens beside her, she thinks for a moment she must be going mad. She nearly had, drying out on the Commodore once the liquor stocks had run dry. She hasn't touched a drop since, but perhaps it's the stress getting to her now. The Bifrost is gone, but here is the swirling rainbow portal roaring to life and in its eye, a familiar figure, bowed in grief, the only thing keeping him upright the large battleaxe he is leaning on. 

Valkyrie throws herself at him before the portal fully closes. “Thor!” Her relief is overwhelming, her heart pounding in her chest as she pushes back to get a look at him. He looks… terrible. Gaunt and dead-eyed, he stares down at her in silence. “Thor, what happened? Where's your brother?” Since the battle for Asgard, Thor and Loki had rarely been seen apart. That he is not here, but Thor is, does not bode well. It occurs to her that Loki might have been among those who… vanished. 

“We have work to do,” he says instead of answering her.

 

\----

 

It feels like the storm will never end. The rain batters against the walls and roofs of their makeshift homes, the howling wind threatening to rip the structures from their foundations. The thunderclap are so loud windows rattle in their frames and lightning pierces the sky in brighter-than-daylight flashes. It's awe-inspiring, and terrifying, and Valkyrie can't even get close to him.

In the end, it's Korg that makes it. His tough exterior makes him impervious to the weather and he muscles his way through to where Thor is standing on the cliff's edge. She can't hear their conversation over the freight-train roar of the wind, but after a moment it starts to die down. The rain turns to big, fat, drops and the thunder subsides. Thor turns to Korg and collapses into his arms, sobbing. She thinks she hears,  _ I went for the head. _

 

\----

 

Thor doesn't talk much anymore. They work together in silence, because there isn't very much to say. Within weeks, New Asgard has everything it needs to be a self-sustaining fishing village, with Midgardians from neighboring towns more than willing to help out and a generous contribution from something called the Stark Relief Fund. Maybe seeing Thor alive gives them hope. She doesn't know. What she does know is that Thor himself is a silent specter, withdrawn into himself to such a degree that she isn't sure how much of her king is still even  _ in _ there. 

“You can't keep blaming yourself,” she informs him one evening, across the table from him in New Asgard's only tavern. He's staring down into the tankard clutched tightly between both hands, expression stormy. “You did everything you could have done. You saved as many people as could be saved. Thanos -” 

Thor flinches with his entire body and his breath starts to come in sharp huffs. “I don't  _ ever _ want to hear that  _ monster's  _ name again,” he growls, voice shaking. “Never. Again.” He drains the tankard and stands, throwing some currency down on the table. “See you tomorrow,” he says.

She doesn't.

 

\-----

 

He's asleep when she lets herself into the cabin he has claimed as his own, a far cry from the golden palace she knows had been his home for over a thousand years. Curled on the couch, in soft pants and oversized cotton shirt, he looks diminished. “Thor?” she ventures. “It's Val. You missed Council today…” And yesterday, and the day before. There are only two Royal Council members left besides herself and Thor, but a desire for normalcy has kept them meeting on a daily basis. Except Thor has stopped coming to the meetings.

“Let me sleep,” Thor murmurs. “I just want to sleep.” 

“Okay,” she replies softly. He deserves to sleep, she thinks. For a little while longer. 

 

\-----

 

She's heading home a few evenings later, sore and exhausted from a full day of hard labor. It's little different, physically, from what she had done on Sakaar. Lots of heavy lifting and a constant need to be on her toes. The stakes are different, now. She's not just working for herself anymore. She's passing the tavern, rolling her shoulders to try and loosen the muscles, when there's a commotion at the door and someone is thrown bodily into the dirt of the road. 

She stops short as Thor picks himself up off the ground, swaying and staggering as he turns back to the building. “Ungrateful bastards!” he shouts, “I'm your king!” He whirls around, fists clenching and unclenching, thunder rolling in the distance. 

“Your Majesty,” Valkyrie says, coming up beside him and touching his forearm. He lurches and nearly falls on his ass. He doesn't seem to recognize her. “Thor?”

Thor straightens, nominally, and stares down at her with his mismatched eyes. His face is puffy, and even under his layers she can see the loss of muscle definition that comes from too much alcohol and too little physical activity. She knows the look well, had seen it staring back at her from the mirror for the first few black years after the massacre of her shield sisters, when Thor himself had been no more than a babe-in-arms.

“What happened?” Valkyrie asks, grasping Thor's arm, ready to start pulling him towards the shack he has claimed for himself. While she hasn't  _ really _ known Thor for very long in the grand scheme of things, she has still known him long enough to know that whatever set him off enough to be  _ physically  _ thrown out of the tavern, it must have been something truly, badly, out of the ordinary.

Scowling, Thor yanks his arm away again. “Talkin’ ‘bout shit they don't understand,” he tells her darkly. “Don't see any of  _ them _ …” His breath hitches and for a moment Valkyrie is afraid he's going to throw up, but instead he screams wordlessly, fists clenched at his sides. A bolt of lightning hits the ground a handful of yards from them, and she jumps away. “Nonea  _ you _ went for the head either!” Thor bellows at the closed door of the tavern. “Shit!”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, breathing hard, head down. He's rubbing his chest now, the furious outburst making way for something else entirely. Valkyrie half-wishes he would have stayed angry. He's making a pathetic whimpering noise, shaking his head back and forth as he rocks unsteadily. “Hey, hey,” she says, venturing closer. “Come on, Majesty. Let's get you home.”

She's a little surprised when Thor lets her herd him back to his home. He seems lost in thought, barely responding as she searches through his pockets for the key. He clings to the doorframe, swaying, only crossing the threshold once she's given him a bit of a shove. He shuffles across the room and Valkyrie can't help her instinctive recoil- his place is an absolute mess, and  _ reeks _ of stale booze and body odor. It reminds her so strongly of her apartment on Sakaar that for a brief, terrible moment she nearly forgets herself. Nearly accepts his slurred offer of a beer, nearly grants herself permission to give in to those cravings. And oh, how she is craving it. It would be so easy; Thor clearly has no intention of giving her a hard time about her coping mechanisms anymore, and even if he did, she would have the ready-made excuse of, “You're being a total hypocrite.” 

It takes him using the axe head of Stormbreaker as a bottle opener for her to jolt back to full awareness. She watches him gulp down the bottle as though it's the only thing keeping him from breaking down completely. She knows the feeling, intimately, and when he reaches for a second bottle, she realizes she needs to tread  _ very _ carefully. She can't risk losing herself again, especially when so many of the responsibilities have been heaped upon her shoulders. She has had her time to mourn, 1500 years’ worth of grief and running.

As much as she wants to punch some sense into the Odinson, she can't say she doesn't understand. She can't say she begrudges him this. He has lost everything in the blink of an eye, and beyond that he carries the weight of the trillions lost in the Snap. Even for a near-immortal god, even for the King of Asgard, the son of Odin, it is too much to bear. Thor, comparatively speaking, is barely into adulthood and already he has experienced enough hardship to last another five thousand years. She hopes his grieving does not last anywhere near so long, because for all her own experience with loss, she isn't sure she can really, truly,  _ help _ the way he clearly  _ needs _ help. After all, the only reason she isn't still on Sakaar, isn't still clinging to her own misery, is Thor. It hasn't been so long that she has even been fully sober on a regular basis herself. How can she  _ possibly _ be the anchor Thor needs?

“You should go to bed,” she says, and leaves before she grabs a drink for herself.

 

\----

 

She asks Korg and Miek to change their residence, to keep an eye on Thor. They both readily agree, their dedication to the  _ lord of thunder  _ still strong. Valkyrie is grateful to them; Thor won’t turn on them, probably, and neither of them seem keen to upset the new status quo. She knows they're mostly just grateful to be away from the arena. 

Korg is also a decent intermediary, letting her keep an eye on Thor without actually having to risk her own recovery. Because she can’t, not with everything else she has to do, because Thor has completely abandoned any pretense of ruling his people. “We got a Playstation,” Korg tells her at their daily check-in session. He seems pretty pleased. “Miek can’t hold the controller.” 

“And Thor?” Valkyrie presses, not particularly caring if Miek can handle a video game console. She hasn’t seen Thor in person in weeks, now, not since the latest batch of ale from the brewery was released. He had shown up, claimed four or five kegs for himself, and then disappeared back into his shack. She hadn’t even had time to say hello. 

“Thor can hold the controller just fine,” Korg replies cheerily. 

Valkyrie rolls her eyes, unable to stop herself. While she has told Korg about her worries regarding their friend, the Kronan is wonderfully naive about certain things. It’s endearing, and she knows it helps keep Thor from throwing him right out, but it also makes these conversations a little like pulling teeth. She could certainly talk to Thor herself, but every time she thinks about going over there again, her teeth get itchy and she has to make a major effort to distract herself from the cravings. “How is he?” she prompts.

Korg shrugs. “Same old,” he replies, which is exactly what she had expected.

 

\---

 

The first time she sees Thor in person after that is six months later. She keeps up to date as much as possible through Korg, but Thor refuses to see anyone else. He’d yelled at her, incoherently, through the door the last time she’d felt brave enough to venture over there, and she hadn’t tried again. She know he leaves the house when he needs more liquor, but he manages to work it so that's only once a month or so. The rest of the time, he keeps himself locked away. It reminds her, a bit, of the last years she had spent on Asgard. 

She had never really had cause to compare Thor to Odin before now. She had spent a great deal of time and effort blocking out the memories of the first time her life was dedicated to serving the throne, and Thor had been so  _ unlike _ Odin and Hela that it was easy to forget what his upbringing must have been like. Odin, during the last days of the Valkyrior, had been broody, contemplative, where Valkyrie had only known him to be bloodthirsty and ruthless. But then Thor had been born, and it all changed. 

Some days, it is easy to get lost in those memories, especially without the blur and warp of alcohol to soften the edges. It’s easy to find herself standing in the throne room, Odin All-Father gravely ordering his Valkyrior to attack his own daughter. It’s easy to relive the sensation of falling from her pegasus, as the woman she had loved more than life itself sacrificed herself. It’s easy to recall standing in the throne room again, this time alone, as Odin dismisses her entirely, his expression distant and haunted, thunder crashing outside, as a baby wails in the antechamber behind the throne. 

She still wouldn't go so far as to fully compare Thor and Odin, but Valkyrie has served royalty for thousands of years. She knows what was taught in the House of Odin, what messages Thor must have internalized. She had internalized the same ones, to an extent. She wishes there were an easy way to talk to him about it, about how she  _ understands exactly  _ what he’s going through, and understands just as well why he’s chosen the methods of coping that he has. She gets it, and that's the problem. That's why she can’t be more involved. Someone has to run this damned kingdom.

Which is exactly what she is trying to do when she sees him again, unloading one of the boats into a truck bed. He’s making his way down to the docks, his gait unsteady. There’s a beer in his hand and he’s dressed in stained sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt, rough-looking fingerless gloves swathing his hands. His hair has grown back surprisingly fast, and it falls in clumped dreadlocks around a truly impressive beard that hides half his face. “Valkyrie!” he calls happily, throwing his arms up in greeting. At least he seems to be in a good mood. “Valkyrie hey! It's me, Thor!” 

“Hey, Your Majesty,” Valkyrie greets in response, trying to keep the wariness out of her voice. “Nice to see you out and about.” She wants to scream at him, to scold him and tell him to get his head out of his ass and  _ lead _ , but she can’t bring herself to. She knows how it feels, probably better than anyone else. 

Thor turns his gaze to the sky. His remaining eye is unfocused, and the bionic one he wears looks like it hasn’t been taken out or attended to in a while. The flesh around his eye socket looks a little tender, and she’s not sure how to suggest that it might be a good idea to get it checked. “It's a nice day out,” he tells her, words slurred enough that she has to pay close attention to catch what he’s saying. “An’ I'm out of beer.” 

She probably should have known. It  _ was _ getting to be that time of the month. “Uh huh,” she replies, crossing her arms over her chest. She can’t help but notice how tightly his hoodie is pulling across his stomach, the softness and paunch not there the last time she’d seen him. “You know what I was thinking about that?”

Thor gives her a wide, bleary smile. “What?” he asks, pleasantly. Despite his improvement in outward mood, Valkyrie knows better, and knows full well that Thor’s brand of obliviousness masks something far deeper. 

“That you drink too much and it’s probably going to kill you,” she responds with a one-shouldered shrug. Well, maybe the drinking itself wouldn’t kill him, but it is a symptom of something that might very well do him in, if Korg’s reports of blood and tears are anything to go by. 

Thor seems to recognize her reference because he smiles even wider, as if they're sharing an inside joke. “I don’t plan to quit drinking,” he informs her, finishing off the beer in his hand to prove the point. Her chest tightens, and she wants to block his way to the brewery, wants to keep him from digging himself further into the pit she is also trying to keep from falling into. “S’been a while, you good?” he asks, effectively cutting off the possibility of a further conversation.

“I would be better if our king was actually running the kingdom instead of expecting someone with exactly zero experience to do it,” she comments. 

Thor laughs, and it sounds like he might have a cold or something because the sound is a little throatier than it used to be. Then again, Valkyrie knows full well from personal experience what constant drinking can do to one’s vocal chords. Her voice had once been much lighter, more lilting. She doubts anyone from her old life would be able to recognize her by sound alone, now. “Well, we have the same level of experience, and you're doing a great job,” he says, giving her a blurry smile and dropping a hand onto her shoulder, heavily. 

“You have an entire lifetime of learning how to be king,” she points out. While she’s glad to see him, to find him in a decent, talkative, mood, she really wants to get back to work. Somehow, it's harder. Her attention keeps returning to the bottle in Thor’s hand, empty though it might be. He’s figured out her answer to things- figured out that the best way to get through the day is to drink, and pretend. And he’s doing such a damn fine job of it that Valkyrie finds herself jealous. 

“Theory and practice are two different things,” he informs her, squeezing her shoulder with bruising intensity before releasing her. His expression darkens for just a moment before he brightens again. “So thanks for that, and if you’d just point me in the right direction, I'll get out of your hair.” It occurs to her now that he shouldn’t be down at the docks if he was on his way to get booze, that he had probably seen her and gotten distracted and is now trying to cover that fact up. She wonders just how much he’s drinking if he’s unable to make an easy trip out of his house like this. 

“Back up the hill.” She points and uses her foot to nudge him into the right position to head back off. “Don’t die.”

He turns to give her a tight, unpleasant, smile. “Come over sometime,” he suggests. She nods, waves, and decides that she will not being doing that any time soon. She, after all, has work to do. 

 

\----

 

She gets a few emails from Bruce Banner over the next couple of years. Since Thor steadfastly refuses to adjust to Midgardian technology besides the video game console and television, Valkyrie serves as the intermediary more often than not. It’s not a job she enjoys, and she enjoys it even less so as time passes and Thor slides deeper and deeper into depression. Their paths cross rarely, now, and Valkyrie makes it a point to be around on the days he makes a supply run, if only to reassure herself that he’s still alive.

And he is still alive, but barely, it seems. The weight he had begun to gain the first year here seems to have settled onto him to stay, and he seems a little more disheveled every time she sees him, now, a little less in touch with his surroundings. It’s like talking to a stranger, and one who has no desire to communicate with the outside world in any capacity. “I got another message from Banner,” she tells him on this particular day. He’s a  _ little _ more sober than he was during the last supply run, which is a small victory, at least. “Were you planning to write back, or…?” She lets her voice trail off, lets him make his own assumptions about what she means to say next. 

“Mmm, I have an idea,” Thor replies, hefting another keg into the cart he uses solely for this purpose, “you do it.” He flashes a smile that might have been charming three years ago but now looks hollowed out and pasted on. “Yeah, that's a good idea. You do it. Tell him how great we all are! How - perfect everything is.” His voice waivers and Valkyrie winces. She’s tempted to write back to Banner and tell him everything, to demand he  _ do something  _ about all of this, but she can’t bring herself to. She can’t bring herself to betray Thor’s trust like that, for one thing, and for another - she isn’t sure she’s really up to opening up a conversation herself. She’s had time to work through some things, but being around Thor for any length of time is still a struggle for her, has her expecting to accompany him back to his hut, to help him drain those kegs, to forget the responsibilities weighing on her like the dead pegasus she had been trapped under for hours. She shudders, and forces her attention back on Thor instead of her memories.

“Fine,” she sighs. She wants to scream at him. She wants to cry. But she is the last Valkyrie, and Queen Regent. She didn’t cry on Sakaar, and she’s certainly not going to cry now, even if the man she had followed literally to the gates of Hel and back has turned into an unrecognizable ghost of a person. “I'll tell him you're being impossible, as usual.” 

Thor ignores her dig at him. “And could you call somebody about the cable?” he asks. “It keeps going fuzzy.” Like she’s his valet, his servant, like he’s still prince of the golden realm and she is the one meant to follow him around picking up after him. She had been close enough to Hela, in her first years as a Valkyrie, to know just how spoiled Odin’s children could be. Thor truly isn’t doing much to change her opinion on the matter. 

“Sure that's not just your vision, Majesty?” she asks dryly. Thor chuckles and points at her, and she scowls a little bit as she watches him finish loading the cart. “Don’t die,” she orders him as he starts making his way back home. He merely grunts in response.

 

\----

 

She can’t keep doing this. Five years after she had landed on Midgard, and nothing seems to have improved. Oh, New Asgard itself is doing just fine. It’s self-sufficient, and the people are hearty. More and more children are being born every year, and some families are even venturing away, exploring what else Midgard has offer. They always return, though, and what they bring back from the cities and towns surrounding them only helps strengthen the kingdom. 

No, the problem isn’t the place, nor the people. The problem is Thor. Thor, who had once looked her dead in the eye and told her that he wasn’t the sort of person to run from his problems. Who had forced her to give up her comfortable life as a Scrapper to come  _ here _ and lead a people she hadn’t been a part of in centuries. Who now won’t even leave his house unless there’s the promise of a drink. She can’t even have a real conversation with him anymore. 

The day to day running of New Asgard keeps her busy enough not to think about it, most of the time. Like Thor, she is burying her feelings, but unlike Thor, she’s actually being productive about it. She never would have been, before him, and she is in turns resentful and grateful that she is no longer in the same boat. 

Still, it’s starting to wear on her, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can pretend that her friend - her  _ king  _ \- will move on from this. This month when he comes for his supplies- growing in quantity with each passing month - she avoids him. He doesn’t seem to notice. 

Valkyrie goes back to work. 


End file.
